Attacks on the Press 2009: Afghanistan

Key Statistic
20: Years that Parwez Kambakhsh would have spent in jail on an unjust charge. He was freed in August.

Deepening violence, flawed elections, rampant corruption, and faltering development provided plenty of news to cover, but the deteriorating national conditions also raised dangers for local and foreign journalists working in Afghanistan. Roadside bombs claimed the life of a Canadian reporter and injured several other international journalists. A series of kidnappings mainly targeted international reporters, but one captive Afghan journalist was killed during a British military mission that succeeded in rescuing his British-Irish colleague.

Insurgent groups sought to
disrupt the August 20 presidential elections with an array of bombings and
other attacks, prompting the government to issue a directive urging news media
not to report on Election Day violence. Officials followed up with phone calls
seeking to discourage such reporting, saying the coverage would deter turnout.
Some Afghan news media toned down coverage in response, journalists told CPJ,
but most reported events as they ordinarily would. “Our local members in all 34
provinces all rejected the government’s request, and we issued a statement and
told members to continue reporting all day the same way they have in the past,”
Rahimullah Samander, head of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association,
told CPJ. International journalists reported obstruction by police seeking to
enforce the directive. P.J. Tobia, a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, reported that police were “ripping video and
still cameras off the shoulders of photographers and television reporters”
seeking to cover the aftermath of a Kabul firefight. At least three
international journalists and several local journalists were briefly detained
in various parts of the country on Election Day.

Reports of fraud emerged
as quickly as tallies showing President Hamid Karzai ahead. The United Nations,
which was charged with overseeing the vote, found the official counts in some provinces
exceeded the estimated number of voters by more than 100,000. U.N. officials eventually said that nearly a
third of the ballots for the incumbent were fraudulent and should be thrown
out, leaving Karzai with less than 50 percent of the vote. U.S. and
international pressure persuaded Karzai to agree to a runoff, but chief
presidential rival Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from the race on November 1,
saying the voting would still be rigged. Barely an hour after the Afghan
Independent Election Commission announced on November 2 that Karzai had won by
default, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul
issued a statement congratulating him and calling the election “historic.”
Though the vote was marred by a lack of security, low turnout, fraud, and voter
intimidation, many other countries accepted the result as well. During a
pre-election trip to Kabul in July, CPJ was told by diplomats and international
aid agencies of the importance of stability and continuity before and after the
voting, and they warned of a dangerous “political vacuum” if the election were
inconclusive.

The problem-plagued
election deepened the risk in places such as Kandahar. The city and the
surrounding areas have long been a focal point of military conflict between
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Taliban groups, but
journalists said the southern province became even more dangerous as the
election arrived. “Besides the daily threat of being caught up in an attack by
insurgent groups, several local journalists tell CPJ they fear beatings,
detentions, or worse in retribution for their reporting,” Executive Director
Joel Simon wrote in a letter to Karzai in September. CPJ’s letter noted that
local reporters were also concerned about threats from officials connected with
the provincial council, headed by the president’s brother and campaign manager,
Ahmed Wali Karzai. News outlets that carried allegations of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s involvement in drug
smuggling and campaign corruption were among those targeted.

With violence continuing,
the United States and some of the 41 other countries that make up the ISAF
increased troop commitments in late year. In November, a week after five U.N.
staff members were killed by militants who targeted their Kabul housing
compound, the United Nations evacuated about 600 of its 1,100 international
staff, at least initially calling it a temporary move.

Abductions remained a
pernicious problem, raising not only security issues but difficult questions
about how best to secure the freedom of captives and how to report the stories.
Since 2007, at least 15 journalists were reported abducted by the Taliban and
other militant or criminal groups. Although international journalists appeared
to be targeted, local reporters—often serving as guides, interpreters, and
fixers for their international counterparts—were also snatched and placed at
risk. Three cases offer different insight into the issue.

In November, in one of the
most recent abductions, Norwegian freelance television producer Paal Refsdal and his
translator, Seraj-u-den Ahmadzai, were released from captivity in Kunar province, near the Pakistan
border. Their freedom came after quiet negotiations between the Norwegian
Embassy and a Taliban group holding them, with the cooperation of the Afghan
government.

The September kidnapping
of New YorkTimes
reportersStephen Farrell and Sultan Mohammed Munadi ended much differently.
Four days after the two were takenby Taliban forces south of
Kunduz, British commandos rescued Farrell, a British-Irish national, but did
not save Munadi, who was killed during the mission under circumstances that
were not explained. The Times told CPJ it had expressed reservations about
the mission beforehand to British officials. In November, CPJ wrote to British
Prime Minister Gordon Brown urging his government to investigate whether
organizers of the mission had identified Munadi’s rescue as a central objective
and whether troops had sufficient information to identify him as a captive.
Brown’s office said he had referred the matter to the Defense Ministry, which
did not immediately respond to CPJ. The death of Munadi, a respected local
reporter, resonated deeply in the Afghan press corps. Local journalists formed
the ad hoc Munadi Group, which called on the Afghan government, NATO, the
United Nations, and the British government to explain how and why Munadi had
been killed.

David Rohde, a prominent New York Times reporter on leave to write a book, and his local colleague, Tahir
Ludin, managed to escape their Taliban captors in June 2009, after seven months
in captivity. The two were abducted in November 2008 while on their way to
interview a Taliban commander in Logar province, south of Kabul, and were taken
to Pakistan’s North Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan. During the
time Ludin and Rohde were held, TheNew
York Times suppressed reporting of
the abduction. The paper’s staffers in New York contacted editors and bloggers
to say that a media blackout was in the men’s best interests. CPJ and others
honored the request, which the paper said had come from Rohde’s family. In the
aftermath, the case stirred debate in the United States over the ethics of
withholding the news story from the public.

Danish Karokhel, who runs the Pajhwok Afghan
News agency, said he faces such difficult decisions regularly. He told CPJ in
Kabul that he refrains from covering many stories for fear of angering powerful
figures and, thus, endangering his reporters. But then, he said, he has to deal
with complaints from local people who want their story told and want to know why
it is not being reported. “As a reporter in this country, what are we supposed
to cover? Every story has to anger someone; that’s what makes it news,” said
Karokhel, a 2008 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee.

The Afghan press corps covered violence and
corruption forcefully, although political influence on news outlets was
pervasive. Many media outlets are tied to influential political figures and
tribal leaders, and the government often allocates broadcast licenses to local
figures to curry political favor. Reporting on the drug trade was especially
hazardous. The 2008 murder of Abdul Samad Rohani, a BBC and Pajhwok Afghan News
reporter who had covered drug trafficking in Helmand province, remained
unsolved.

In late December, a reporter embedded with
Canadian troops was killed along with four soldiers while traveling in a
military convoy. Michelle Lang, who was working for the Calgary Herald and Canwest News Service, was covering the activities of a
reconstruction team when its vehicle hit a roadside bomb just south of
Kandahar.

The year was marked by one positive note.
Parwez Kambakhsh, a 24-year-old Afghan journalist and student unjustly
convicted of blasphemy, was freed from Kabul Detention Center in August,
apparently on a presidential pardon. Kambakhsh had been arrested in October
2007 and accused of distributing an Internet article about women’s rights in
Islam. He was initially sentenced to death during a brief, closed-door
proceeding at which he was denied legal representation. The death sentence was
later reduced to a 20-year prison term.

CPJ had waged a vigorous international campaign
on behalf of Kambakhsh, and had visited the young reporter in jail in July. The
case was politically sensitive for Karzai, who had to strike a balance between
international pressure and the expectations of the country’s conservative
religious leadership. Yaqub Ibrahimi, the journalist’s brother and a reporter
himself, thanked CPJ for its advocacy in the case and said the release was “a
victory for freedom of speech in Afghanistan.” Wary of future reprisals,
Kambakhsh and his brother left Afghanistan for undisclosed locations.